Morality and the Military

“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost,” according to the old proverb. “For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse, the rider was lost … for want of a rider the battle was lost … and for want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

Someday, historians will record the Senate’s repeal last week of the imperfect “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding homosexual behavior in the military as the loss of a battle. The lost rider who cost us that battle could be any one of the repeal supporters who sat astride a lost “horse” best identified as a federal government increasingly distanced from any sense of moral obligation to its people and their history.

That culture, in turn, is the missing shoe … a society that has lost its footing as it stumbles farther and farther from its Judeo-Christian beginnings and beliefs. And the nail … well, the nail, of course, is the symbol of those beliefs, and the cross that embodies them.

The repeal of DADT was wrong not, primarily, because the changes it will bring will radically transform both the U.S. military and its relationship with key allies all over the world, and inevitably undermine the security and defenses of our nation. Nor even because it was passed over the vehement objections of the great majority of America’s fighting servicemen whose daily lives and service it will soon and drastically impact.

No, ultimately there’s only one reason to oppose the repeal – and it is, of course, the reason that almost no politician or military officer is willing or able to say, right out loud.

The repeal was and should be opposed because it endorses homosexual behavior – and homosexual behavior is morally wrong.

The hue and cry begins. An outrage! Intolerance! Bigotry of the most blind and blatant sort! Religious zealotry! Radical homophobia!

The protestors doth protest too much. Because – beneath all the hubbub and clamor – we’re agreed on this.

That is certainly true of the advocates of homosexual behavior. It is why, despite all their press releases and sound bites, they’re no longer working for social acceptance. They don’t need to secure a place of tolerance in the culture – that’s long since been achieved. What they want – and increasingly admit to wanting – is not the acknowledgement or embrace of society, but a revolution in society. The elimination not of discrimination, but of standards … of marriage … of religious faith, insofar as it criticizes homosexual behavior.

These are the actions not of people who know their beliefs to be morally justified, but of people determined to forcibly rewrite morality to justify their beliefs.

Alan Sears, a former federal prosecutor in the Reagan Administration, is president and CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal alliance employing a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.